Our culture

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Mezzo Labs’ culture is its greatest asset – a dynamic, extravert mix of passionate individuals who just want to put a ding in the analytics universe.

Mezzo Labs is an analytics consultancy. We have only people, talent and a way of working together to achieve our results. Our culture is the special sauce, what binds us as a team, and what sets us apart from all the rest.

Its hard to describe a culture, but we can talk about its qualities, its values. These are some of the qualities we hold dear.

Do things differently

We have worked hard to make Mezzo Labs unlike any other analytics consultancy, unlike any other company. The way it looks at its people, the way it looks at its work, we deliberately try to do things differently. If someone suggests something just because it has been done before, that’s the idea that gets binned. But the idea that is new, maybe a bit risky, but different, that’s the one we go with.

People first

We hire people that are different, people who are not happy working in a big corporate structure, people who thrive when they are empowered to make their own decisions and find their own way.

We have inverted our management model to empower those at the coal face. We call it People First. Our people don’t wait to be told what to do – they tell management what they NEED to get the job done. We do everything we can to empower those that need power at the most important point: in front of the customer.

A good example of this was in the creation of our brand values. We didn’t use a branding agency, we didn’t ask the boss what our values were, we let the people decide. Three members of staff created seven or eight values, and asked the rest of the team to decide which ones were “so Mezzo”. The five brand values that we have today are by the people, for the people. And much truer to our spirit too.

The talent incubator

The company’s job is simple: to support our people, and to nurture their talent. If we help them get to where they want to get to, we will have happy people and they will make our customers happy. So we need to be a talent incubator, both in terms of their work skills, but also their life skills.

So we created Inside Out: a personal and professional development course that will help you write the book of your life. You’ll discover what truly drives you, how to maximise your strengths, what your longer-term mission is, and how to set effective goals that will get you there. The results are astounding. Not only is staff retention at industry leading levels, but happiness (and productivity) is at an all-time high.

Be bold

We pick up some odd behaviours in corporate life and one of them is to be risk-averse – which soon becomes “tall poppy syndrome” and eventually develops into a “can’t do” corporate mentality.

But in Mezzo Labs our job is to get stuff done. Our job is to challenge the status quo. To ask “why?” To ask “is there another way we can get around that problem?”

We are a small company but we have to be bold. We encourage everyone to stick their neck out and say what no one else wants to say. You never know, it might be the genius idea that everyone was thinking, but no one felt “comfortable” suggesting.

Have fun

There is no point in coming to work and having a miserable time. Particularly if you work for a company that is in charge of its own destiny, that doesn’t have to produce results for the money markets or VCs.

So if we are not having fun with what we do, we are failing. We look for every opportunity to enjoy our work. It might be a small celebration of a moment of “wow”, it might be a social event, or it might be using the tools of our trade to create something that is just for the hell of it – an analysis of coffee shops in London. It doesn’t matter. As long as it puts a smile on our faces.